Right-Wingers message to veterans: You are NOT a priority.

[katinmn]

The VA faces at least a $1.2 billion shortfall at a time when 103,000 returning Iraq and Afghanistan soldiers are in need of health services.

It shouldn't have happened.

In March 2004, New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith, chair of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, told House leadership that the VA needed at least $2.5 billion more in its budget. Rep. Rob Simmons, R-Conn., chair of the VA health subcommittee, and Rep. Rick Renzi R-Ariz., a member, also signed the letters to Hastert and DeLay.

The response: Hastert and DeLay removed Smith and Simmons from their chairmanships and kicked Renzi off the VA health subcommittee entirely. Those punished won't talk about it.

The Senate has repeatedly voted for requested funding for the VA, but the neocon-controlled House consistently turns its back on wounded soldiers. They serve their Bush God, not soldiers, not veterans, not Americans.

House Republicans are yellow vile scum. If there is justice in this world they will face it along with Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, Rice and all who are responsible for the death, carnage, and pain they have unleashed on the world.
:grr:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/congress_veterans
GOP Scrambles to Fill Veterans' Shortfall

Exerpt:
About $250 million of the shortfall can be attributed to soldiers who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan, the VA said. The agency had predicted 23,000 of those war veterans would need its services. The department now puts the number at 103,000.

About a month before the House Republicans warned Hastert and DeLay, then-Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi disclosed in a hearing that the White House's Office of Management and Budget had cut his budget request by $1.2 billion. It was a rare criticism from within the administration.

The White House's disdain for presidentially appointed officials who publicly waver from the administration's position was well-known. In 2002, the administration fired Mike Parker, the civilian head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, after he complained to the Senate Budget Committee about the water projects Bush wanted to cut.

(Principi stepped down after Bush's reselection and wouldn't comment on the shortfall.)
-snip-
Nonetheless, the department put some of the blame for this year's shortfall in budgeting for only 8,500 beds rather than the 13,000 mandated by Congress. VA officials were unable to explain why fewer beds were budgeted.

Here's the letter to Hastert and DeLay, signed by 31 members of the two committees.
http://wid.ap.org/documents/050715veterans.pdf
more

[stray cat]

1. Soldiers fighting are not a priority either.

60 minutes reported that soldiers fighting in Iraq are not a priority either. Money that should have gone to equip the troops with protective armor and ammunition for training went to "defense porkbarrel spending ie nothing to do with defense.

[katinmn]

2. Operation Truth is fighting back with an ad campaign

http://www.optruth.org/main.cfm